Recollection
by Maliwarm
Summary: While escaping from NESTS after the end of the '99 tournament, the scenery stirs a wisp of ever-elusive memory for K'. Crossposted from Tumblr.


K' peeled his eyes open, unsure of exactly what it was that woke him. Greeting them was a dark skyline, the only available light coming from passing street lights and the radio whispering some rock anthem on low volume. Stores passed by, many unlit, and the rest adorned by patches of bright neon. All of them were blurs. Slowly, he shifted up from his slump. His cheek was peeled away from the window and rubbed at to chase away the numbness from resting on it for too long. Softly though. It, and much of the rest of his body, was tender with bruises about… half a day old now, he thought. Some burns and gashes, too.

"Hey," Maxima greeted softly. He didn't look away from the road, large hands lightly drumming the steering wheel in time to the radio. "Have a good sleep, partner?"

K' hummed neutrally. Lingering sleepiness was impeding his ability to form words as of this moment. The sleep itself hadn't been awful, he supposed. Dreamless and, for once, heavy. He attributed that to recovering from the aftermath of their successive fights – twice against Krizalid, and then against the massive platoon of Ikari soldiers who had stormed in, guns blazing, in the wake of his death – and their mell pell escape.

His gaze swung downwards to his lap, where his gauntleted hand rested. The deep crags running through its middle were visible for the briefest of moments every time they passed under a street light. The flames it helped to contain shifted sluggishly beneath his skin, having exhausted themselves out of their raging pillar some time ago. Maxima might have had a hand in that. He had a vague recollection of the cyborg explaining a plan to attempt interfacing with the circuitry inside the gauntlet to trigger the inbuilt failsafe. Maybe. His consciousness had been wavering too badly by that point to be entirely sure; exhaustion from combat and the strain of his flames going haywire – burning him up from the inside and out – swiftly dragging him towards blissful darkness. If the plan truly was real it must have worked, since the car hadn't exploded into a fireball while he slept. Speaking of… he was curious as to when and how Maxima had acquired the vehicle, but he was much too tired to quiz him about it. Maybe later, when his fatigue petered out some.

His eyes wandered away from his hand, heavy and tingling with pins and needles, to the passenger window. Vaguely, he was able to make out a large body of water. It seemed to be shifting and rolling gently. Curious, K' wound the window down enough to poke his head through. Cool wind whipped at his face, blowing his snowy fringe up and back, semi-plastering it to the top of his skull. The air was clean and scented heavily with salt. His nose twitched, hoping to make sense of the sudden strange lightness in his chest and fuzzy prick of familiarity that had arisen when he got his first whiff. "What is that?" he murmured, voice quiet and thick with lingering drowsiness.

He half expected Maxima to be unable to hear him over the wind. The fact he was silent for a good couple of minutes hinted as much. Eventually though, he answered, shooting K' a brief look tinged heavily with curiosity; one that was missed entirely as he continued to stare, enraptured by the water. "The ocean."

"Ocean, huh…" The feeling of familiarity sharpened some. It sounded _right_. It also stirred up a fractured image; sun-bleached sand and two small sets of hands patting down a raised lump of the stuff into a wonky dome. The lightness in his chest swelled and he brought his left hand up to rub absently at it. He figured it was the chill beginning to get to him, so with no small amount of reluctance he pulled his head back in. The window was wound back up, blocking the salted breeze. K' rested his cheek against it again, watching the distant roiling surface through heavy lids. His fingers trailed up higher, gently tracing the ridges of the silver cross at his throat. "I wouldn't mind going. Once this shit clears up a little."


End file.
